Heartless thugs bludgeoned an 88-year-old Bronx grandmother to death and left her on the floor of her apartment with her groceries scattered around her body, cops and neighbors said.

Evelyn Shapiro, 88, was discovered at about 10 a.m. yesterday in a pool of blood by her grandson and daughter, who stopped by after they could not reach her by phone for 24 hours, police said.

The apartment was ransacked and some items were missing, police sources said.

The apartment door was found slightly ajar, and groceries were found in the trunk of her car, indicating that she was unloading them when she was attacked.

The grisly murder — which police at first mistook for a shooting because there was so much blood — unfolded at the Pelham Parkway Houses on Williamsbridge Road.

Neighbors said Shapiro was a friendly woman with a penchant for wearing lots of jewelry because she was afraid to keep valuables in her home.

“She wore an insane amount of jewelry all the time,” recalled neighbor Lisa Velez, 48. “We would tell her to be careful wearing so much jewelry, and she said she was scared she would get robbed if she left it at home. It all looked real.”

She was remembered as an active woman who participated in senior trips at the Sue Ginsburg Senior Center and always looked well put together.

Velez described Shapiro as very active, “always shopping, with all her wits about her.”

“She’d walk around the neighborhood and say hello to everyone,” said a stunned acquaintance, Maria Lopez Cayon, 62, who was visiting her mother in the building yesterday and often spent time chatting with Shapiro.

“It’s monstrous to kill an old lady like that. This used to be a nice neighborhood when my mother moved in 10 years ago.”

Bronx Borough President Ruben Diaz Jr. vowed to help the NYPD track down the killer.

“Ms. Shapiro was a well-known pillar of her community,” Diaz said in a statement. “A woman who cared for the well-being of the neighborhood and had spent the better part of her life at the Pelham Parkway Houses. That she met so violent an end is disgusting.”

No arrests have been made and no weapon was recovered.

Police yesterday afternoon were attempting to retrace Shapiro’s trip from the grocery store to her apartment using surveillance videotape from the store to see if anyone followed her home.